Up the back of New­town – past the hos­pit­al, past New Zeal­and’s first branch lib­rary, past the com­munity dis­play-win­dow where the Con­scien­tious Object­ors’ memori­als absent from Pukeahu Park quietly under­score ANZAC cel­eb­ra­tions – runs a nar­row path mark­ing the spine of Tangi-te-Keo (later Mt Vic­tor­ia).

Māori knew the spine of Tangi-te-Keo as Te Ranga-a-Hiwi, the Ridge of Hiwi – ded­ic­at­ing the rocky scen­ic path to the daugh­ter of Tara. Hiwi’s father­’s people, Ngāi Tara, prob­ably laid the first set­tle­ments in the area, such as the pā now sleep­ing beneath the Basin Reserve.

Hiwi’s ridge would briefly take on the name of Vic­tor­ia Road, later again rechristened after the city’s Fire Bri­gade became flum­moxed by cal­louts from the city’s vast pleth­ora of sep­ar­ate Queenly streets. Te Ranga-a-Hiwi now became called Alex­an­dra Road, in hon­our of Alex­an­dra of Den­mark – daugh­ter of that coun­try’s King and wife of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. The leafy path would be a wellknown beat amongst Wel­ling­ton’s queer com­munity: Frank Sargeson writes of forest trysts inter­rup­ted by the loc­al con­stabu­lary, lov­ers van­ish­ing like satyrs into the under­growth.

Alex­an­dra’s spine runs along her moth­er-in-law’s moun­tain, a bor­der­land look­ing down over the city and out upon the fos­sil­ized body of Whā­taitai the tani­wha, upon which now lies Wel­ling­ton Air­port. The pan­or­amic view would earn Tangi-te-Keo the later appel­la­tion of Matair­angi, sea-and-sky.

While Whā­taitai’s com­pan­ion Ngake was escap­ing into the sea, open­ing up the ancient lake into the har­bour that would later wel­come the European set­tlers of Pōneke, the less-for­tu­nate tani­wha’s soul became a bird, Te Keo, ascend­ing into the sky. Te Keo settled high on Te Ranga-a-Hiwi, com­men­cing tangi – lam­ent­a­tions – for his ruined body. Tangi-te-Keo – the site of Te Keo’s tangi – is a lim­in­al zone, a bridge between heav­en and earth.

The last wings of Wel­ling­ton’s Fever Hos­pit­al looked up Matair­angi toward Tangi-te-Keo, dying patients’ final breaths mix­ing into the gorse-flower air drift­ing between sea and sky. Later gen­er­a­tions would dare one anoth­er to walk Hiwi’s spine by night, peopling the aban­doned hos­pit­al with a host of geni­us loci: impor­ted Grey Ladies and patients-in-mourn­ing, loc­al spir­its syn­cret­ised into Old-World codes ful­filling a com­mon myth­ic urge.

Deep below Tangi-te-Keo lies a thick stone crushed between either side of the fault whose rup­tures drove Hiwi’s spine high. Nar­row and ser­pent­ine, this old­est dragon sits far beneath the site of Keo’s time­less tangi, anchor­ing the ridge that divides Wel­ling­ton’s south­ern reaches.